Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Beautiful picture. Everything looking so new, pristine and idyllic. Just wondering how old the street would have been when this was taken. Those trees were obviously planted specially to line the street and they aren't small. They must be 25+ years old?

The fact that everything looked so neat and tidy is mind boggling considering that pretty much *everything* was done by hand. No motorized lawn mowers or weed wackers; no electric mixers for the concrete curbs, yet everything is picture perfect.

What really caught my attention (which some might think unusual for a woman) was to take special notice of the sidewalk, driveway, steps and curbs -- just how professional and modern all that cement work is. Somehow I wouldn't think they could have made such nice clean smooth cement back then and laid it all in so nicely.

The home immediately on the left in the photo is still there, largely preserved and lovely, and is now condos. The same is true for many of the surrounding homes. Gone are the majestic elms that lined the streets of Saratoga but the Union Avenue Historic District still makes for a nice stroll. Less that a half mile east of this photo (which is looking west) is the famous and historic Saratoga Racecourse, considered by many to be the most beautiful in the country, yours truly included.

Ahhhh... homes that looked like small castles, trees that lined both sides of the street (and all the way down), and no fast traffic; all things that contribute to this being a safe place for a little girl to take a stroll.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.